Abstract

The empirical study was carried out to check the hypothesis that myopia can influence the development of self-attitude features of teenagers and youths. 50 participants took part in the study (30 myopic participants — 12 males and 18 females, and 20 participants with normal eyesight — 8 males and 12 females) from 15 to 20 years old, senior pupils and students. Projective methods and inventories were used: the nonexistent animal figure test, self-portrait picture test, S.R. Pantileev’s methodic of self-attitude measurement (questionnaire), and self- attitude scoring questionnaire developed by us. The results of the study confirm the hypothesis and show that myopic teenagers and youths has specific features of self-attitude, such as the disposition towards self-criticism, negative attitude towards characteristics of self, the decline of communicational self-attitude and communicational activity, the tendency to deep intelligent reflection of self with great attention toward weaknesses. Moreover, myopic respondents show rigid and extreme scores of self-attitude, passiveness in communication, sensitivity towards other people’s scores. It was shown, that self-attitude of myopic teenagers resembles that of blind and visually impaired people. It was also shown that myopic teenagers are more self-critical and tend to negative evaluation of themselves as communicational partners.